


Cut the Chains and Travel Light

by CatKing_Catkin



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Aggressively queerplatonic Mollymauk and Yasha, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Character Study, Developing Relationship, Episode: c02e055 Duplicity, Gen, Introspection, Loneliness, Mind Control, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Minor Beauregard/Yasha (Critical Role), Mollymauk Tealeaf Lives, POV Mollymauk Tealeaf, Talking, Team Dynamics, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-26 02:30:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19758763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatKing_Catkin/pseuds/CatKing_Catkin
Summary: A high Wisdom score doesn't always mean you'll make your saving throw.In the caves beneath Assarius, the succubus gets her claws into Mollymauk, too.It doesn't last long, but the scars from an experience like that can last a lot longer. Sometimes, all you can do is force yourself to keep going and be grateful to still have people standing beside you.





	Cut the Chains and Travel Light

The thing to do for charm spells was a short, sharp shock, readministered as necessary until the victim’s mind cleared.

Maybe there was a magical solution to such a problem as well, but that was well outside both his area of expertise and the realm of whatever strange repository of knowledge sometimes came to him in a crisis. So he’d work with what he had, and what he had, what he _always_ had in a pinch, was his voice.

The wall of fire hurt as he came into contact with it – he was resistant to heat and flames, but not immune. He could hear the others shouting behind him, mingled cries of alarm and pain, calls for Caleb and calls for him. But Molly forced himself not to think for a second longer about any of that as he charged straight through the inferno and out the other side, beating wildly at his clothes where they’d caught fire around him before focusing the entirety of his attention on the shaking, trembling wizard.

Because Caleb _was_ scared. Molly had always had a talent for reading people and Caleb was far from his usual, closed-off self in that moment. Caleb was _terrified_. Molly could see it in his eyes, mixed with the glazed sheen that betrayed the charm spell beneath the desperate attempt to look cold and detached. Caleb knew _something_ was wrong. Someone, something, had just pointed him in entirely the wrong direction.

His fear probably would have been a good deal sharper and a lot more warranted had he been aware that Yasha was also approaching his position at a dead run. Her silhouette was visible as a dark, twisting shadow through the fire. He still probably would have heard her coming even over the roaring in the air had Molly not pulled out the strongest trick of his blood, _flaring_ his own presence outward and utterly ensnaring Caleb in it, enthralling the human and rendering him unable to look away from Molly at all. “Look at me, you scrawny bastard!” he snarled for good measure, spreading his arms wide and bracing himself for an attack. It was fine if one came. He could take it.

Sure enough, Caleb lifted the glove of blasting and aimed it at him – it was shaking, rattling slightly on his arm, but his aim was unmistakable. In the seconds it took for him to mutter the incantation, Molly met Yasha’s eyes over the top of Caleb’s head, through a brief gap in the fire. No words passed between them in that instant, but no words needed to.

_I’ll handle this._

_I trust you._

But she’d be standing by in case he was wrong. That was fine and good – he wouldn’t have asked her to act any other way. Molly had pulled far stupider stunts than this while bolstered by the knowledge that Yasha had his back. If Caleb needed to be unconscious, at least she could probably make it quick, probably even do so in one brutal strike. She wasn’t resistant to fire, but she was one of the single strongest people he had ever known.

Still, she was giving him a chance in the meantime, and he didn’t mean to waste it. Molly started forward once more even as fire bloomed around Caleb’s gloved fingertips. One blast went wide by a mile, the second one he dodged easily enough. The third one caught him square in the chest, solidly enough to send him staggering back a pace and making even his resistant nerves scream in pain – his chest was a mass of scar tissue, and sometimes they could all hurt so much. He bit back a scream and held his ground beyond that. Molly flexed his fingers – the old, sourceless instincts were screaming at him to draw his blades, to activate them and _kill_ , but he shoved them back down into the dark where they belonged. His hands were empty as he closed the distance between him and Caleb in three long strides. Caleb tried to step back but was blocked by his own fire.

So Molly reared back and slapped Caleb across the face before gripping his shoulders with all the strength he had and snarling: _“You’re better than this and I’ll rattle your brain in your skull until you remember that!”_

He could have been gentler in his words. After all, it didn’t matter what he _said_ , it just mattered the power he put behind the cry. He could have screamed nonsense and it would have had the same effect. But Molly was _scared_ and being scared made him _angry_ and on some level he knew that if he started babbling nonsense for the sake of it then he’d simply devolve fully into gibbering terror and be of no use to either friend on either side. They absolutely could not afford to be wasting time with this right now, not with two other foes still hiding unseen and waiting to pounce.

Fortunately, even as a trickle of blood ran out of Caleb’s nose – probably more from the psychic attack than the slap – he shuddered bodily in Molly’s arms, and the haze of the charm magic cleared from his eyes like fog dissipating before the rising sun.

“Oh,” he breathed and then, oh and then Molly saw tears of horror coming to Caleb’s eyes. His hand flew to his mouth, clamping down tight as if to muffle a scream. “Oh gods--”

“It’s fine,” Molly heard himself saying, relief making him dizzy. He remembered the sound of the explosion, the sound of a high-pitched yelp abruptly cut off, and bit back a wince. “It’s mostly fine. It wasn’t you. That’s what matters.” He deliberately gentled his grip, then mentally decided _to hell with it_ and pulled Caleb into a quick hug. “We’ll fix this. They’ll understand.”

He knew it might take Jester especially a little while before logical facts won out over visceral emotion, but was just as certain that she’d get there in the end, especially now that Caleb was back to help them finish this job.

Caleb was trembling in Molly’s arms, curled in on himself, his breathing harsh and ragged. But he wasn’t _tense_ and, after a moment, Molly felt his hand move in a complicated pattern, felt the heat of the flames vanish as the wall of fire subsided. He caught sight of the others slowly drawing closer, cautious even now. But he also caught sight of Caduceus ducking out of the hallway and drawing close to whisper something to Jester. He saw the relieved smile blossom across her face, and felt a fresh surge of relief in his own chest, too.

He was drawn back to his immediate surroundings by an awkward, fumbling pat on the back from Caleb. Then the wizard drew away, and Molly let him do so. He was still staring fixedly at his feet, and Molly couldn’t blame him.

“Thank you,” Caleb whispered. “I…” He trailed off, licked his lips, then patted Molly on the shoulder once more before turning sharply away. “Thank you.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” Molly said, bemused, before he turned away to rejoin Yasha and help her corral the rest of the group. They still had a ways to go, after all, and danger still lay ahead.

* * *

The next time he met Yasha’s eyes, it was across the chamber as the giant, armored minotaur forced its way into their world.

Once again, no words were said – or at least, no words that required them opening their mouths, giving away their feelings with the spoken and the verbal. Such a thing was suddenly, blessedly unnecessary. They were on opposite sides of the cavern from one another with the minotaur between them, and yet he suddenly felt as if she were right there with him, just behind him, wrapping her arms around him in a sure, strong embrace and murmuring in his ear.

_“Let’s get away from here, Molly. Together. Like it always should have been.”_

And that just set off a _fire_ of longing in his heart, so fierce it made him scrabble blindly at his chest for a moment, unable to form a coherent thought besides a desperate, needy torrent of _yes yes yes_. Because even if he’d grown numb to it, even if the reality of _Yasha always leaves_ had remained perhaps the one consistent fact of his life, that didn’t mean he’d ever _liked_ it. He’d pretended, played it off, especially around the others – at first because the idea of showing weakness or vulnerability to a group of relative strangers had made him itch, and later on because at least he’d been surrounded with people who understood how much it _sucked_ to wake up and suddenly be deprived of her presence. Reassuring them had become more important than wallowing. Yasha always left, but she also always came back, too.

But wouldn’t it be better, so much better, to never have to feel that sting at all?

_“Of course it would. We just have to leave a few things behind first. Travel light. Travel quick.”_

He liked the sound of that.

It seemed to Molly as if he blinked, and suddenly he was moving, at a walk that gradually quickened to a run. For some reason, the minotaur had seemed like the biggest target before, but he’d realized his mistake. It didn’t matter. Instead, he angled towards the half-orc. He had his back to Molly. He’d never see this coming.

And even as he charged, even as he saw Yasha readying her blade to take a chunk out of the human in blue, it was like she was still right beside him, all the while.

_“They tried to keep me from you. They almost gave up on you. But I never did. I never will.”_

_I know_ , Molly thought fiercely, as he drew three blurred, freezing cuts along the half-orc’s back. He smiled fiercely at the sound of the pained, shocked cry that followed.

The next few moments were a blurred haze, though not nearly blurred enough. Molly remembered more than enough details later to haunt his dreams for whatever remained of his new, third life. He felled Caleb once, and otherwise got a hit on every single one of his other friends, even managing the staggeringly difficult feat of both spotting Nott while she was hiding and actually drawing blood before she could scramble away.

He even thought to reactivate his swords with the radiant right before he went after Jester. That, more than anything, would weigh on him later – the faces of his friends twisted in fear and panic at the sight of him was bad enough, but not _that_ much worse than some of the things he usually dreamed. But the knowledge that he’d retained enough control over himself to consider Jester’s own resistances and account for them before trying to cut her down…that would prove a heavy weight to bear.

Remembering the sweet, heady promise of _freedom_ that he’d felt in his bones as he tried to kill them all would be just as bad, too.

Not that he had much time to consider anything in the moment he regained his senses. At first, all he knew was the sense of Yasha being ripped away from him, but he barely had time to choke on a cry of renewed rage and pain before the mist lifted fully from his eyes and he saw the succubus turning to ooze on the ground.

Fjord saw him staring, must have seen the look on his face, and slapped him hard to jolt him back to the immediate situation – and maybe just to make sure the charm had broken for good measure. Molly wouldn’t blame him either way. “Hey!” he barked. “You back with us?!”

Rubbing his jaw, Molly nodded and said nothing else. What else was there to say? Through the chaos and the tumult, he could see Beau battering away at Yasha, he could see Caleb on the ground again, he could hear Jester and Caduceus’ frantic prayers. There was too much else to consider right now, and nowhere near enough time for all the words suddenly choking him. 

He had to trust that Beau could handle Yasha. He _did_ trust that Beau could handle Yasha. From what little he could remember of the previous few moments, the monk had become nearly a demon in her own right, darting to and fro almost too fast to be seen, harrying at the demon with her bare fists and actually making a dent. Beau was strong and controlled enough to get Yasha back, but there was no one close enough to Caleb to get him upright. So Molly ran for the human, sliding gracelessly to his knees beside him. He fumbled in his pockets and pulled out his last healing potion to force between Caleb’s lips. In no time at all, Caleb was staggering back to his feet for the third time in nearly as many minutes, leaning heavily in Molly for support, teeth gritted as he surveyed the last of the battle with overbright eyes.

The first Molly knew of Yasha coming back to her senses was the sound of her roaring in fury and the sight of her charging the minotaur. He didn’t have to be close to know that a rage had overtaken her. In that moment, Molly envied her fiercely – she’d described to him how her rages felt so many times before, and not only was she making herself as dangerous as possible in a fight, she was also sparing herself having to dwell on what had just happened for a little while longer.

He was torn between wanting to race back into the fray to help her and wanting to stay beside Caleb to maybe, hopefully protect him from being pushed past his limits yet again. In the end, Jester helped take the choice out of his hands. “I’ve got him!” she snapped impatiently, shoving Molly aside with one hand and hefting her shield with the other. “Go!”

Nodding gratefully to her, sharing one last look with Caleb, Molly did as he was bidden.

The minotaur didn’t last much longer after that, not between the three of them even if Molly felt as if he mostly provided his usual flanking cover for Beau as well as, during one crucial moment, using his last blood maledict to blind the beast and keep it from landing what might well have been a mortal blow on her. But even as it was on its last legs, the thunder it could summon from its hands remained an impossibly dangerous threat, especially with the surviving incubus flittering in and out of physicality to harry them in turn.

As Beau drove her fists deep into the beast’s chest and ripped its heart out, Molly looked around to see that this time Caduceus was down, and Jester was busily trying to keep the incubus from finishing the job. Molly hurried over to help, meaning to drag Caduceus out of harm’s way so that Jester wasn’t facing the risk of tripping over him.

“He’s mine!” he heard Nott cry, and Molly’s head snapped up just as she pulled the trigger. Her aim was sure and true as it usually ever was, that was clear enough even from here. And yet, there was something about the arrow itself…

Even over the chaos, he caught the scent of gunpowder in the air, and Molly felt his heart freeze in his chest.

He threw himself down flat across Caduceus for all the good it would do, trying to shield him anyway. Fortunately, Fjord proved to have one more trick up his sleeve. _“Nott, no!”_ Molly heard him bark, shortly followed by a torrent of water and a hiss of steam. In all this time, he hadn’t had to use his daily boon of controlling water. What a truly blessed stroke of fortune.

By the time Molly lifted his head, he was in time to see Jester fire one last guiding bolt that lit the incubus up like a torch. It fell to its knees, screaming and writhing as it slowly dissolved into grey offal. Its death cries seemed to echo for an impossibly longer time in the chamber before finally fading into blessed silence, leaving the Mighty Nein alone with each other and the weight of recent events.

Caduceus was the first to break that silence by drawing in a rattling, gurgling breath. That sound jolted Molly into being the second. “Jester!” he called, and even then his voice was weaker than he would have liked. “He needs you!”

Fortunately, Jester had enough magic left to stabilize the other cleric, though nothing more than that. Gritting his teeth, Molly retrieved a neglected medical kit from his bag and set to work patching Caduceus up enough so that he could at least open his eyes and stand.

Not that it mattered much. Everyone was visibly, obviously exhausted. No one was in any fit state to even consider reporting back, let alone attempting the climb back out of the well. It was all they could do to finish searching the room so that they uncovered the possible cause of this rift, though seeing it shattered was at least a bit of a burden off all their minds. If Caduceus hadn’t cast a prayer of healing over all of them, they probably wouldn’t even have been able to manage that much. But when Caleb simply laid down in the middle of the floor, that decided the matter entirely. Everyone crowded together under the dome, eager for even that small sense of safety it could provide. There was no talk of setting watches. Molly would have burst out laughing and never stopped if anyone had tried.

Yet in the end, despite everything, Molly’s body had grown too used to interrupted rest, to sleeping in shifts. So it wasn’t a surprise when he woke to the sight of the softly glowing light of the dome above him and the feeling of all his friends still sleeping deeply around him. It wasn’t the first time. Any other time, even after everything, he might simply have closed his eyes and tried to force himself back to sleep.

“Mollymauk?” came a whisper. Caleb’s voice, coming from just beside him. So Molly wasn’t the only one being kept from sleep. Maybe they all were, and Molly and Caleb were just proving the worst at hiding it. Either way, he reached out a hand across the distance between them. After a long, breathless second, felt Caleb’s fingers twine together with his. Without the bandages, his skin was strangely, pleasantly cool. It was strange, but Molly was getting used to it, and glad for the chance to do so.

“I’m here,” he murmured, for all the good it would do. But he felt Caleb give his fingers a squeeze, so maybe it did at least some good.

He could almost feel Caleb struggling for words, but maybe holding hands helped ground him a little, because he finally whispered in a stammering, stumbling voice: “Who did you see? When she…when it spoke to you?”

 _Ah_.

Molly felt his heart leap up into his throat and choked it down with an effort of will. It was a fair question, no matter how much it made him want to claw at his own skin. It was just a friend trying to connect with another friend who had gone through the same fucked up nightmare that he had.

Even so, coward that he was, all Molly could bring himself to say was: “Someone we both know. You?”

Caleb let out a weak, shaky little laugh. “Someone you wouldn’t know.”

“Doesn’t matter either way, does it? Whoever we saw, whatever they were saying, it wasn’t really them.”

The human huffed out a soft, bitter breath. “ _Ja_. I suppose.”

Molly wasn’t usually one to press the point, rarely ever saw the point of trying to change someone’s mind. But this moment felt so important, so he tried again, just this once. “It wasn’t your fault. I know that. Everyone else knows that even if it might take some time for them to feel it.”

Caleb’s eyes were fixed on his face, drained of their color in the dark but no less intent for it. His gaze was fixed, focused, thoughtful, and – most importantly to Molly in that moment – _sympathetic_. There was understanding in Caleb’s eyes and the grip of his hand, perhaps an understanding of more than Molly had even said so far.

“And it wasn’t yours’, either,” Caleb whispered at last.

Then it was Molly’s turn to chuckle, quiet and rueful. “I don’t believe that about myself. And you don’t believe that about yourself.” That much was unmistakably clear. “But maybe we can believe each other. What do you think?”

“Hm.” Caleb’s eyes fell closed, but his grip on Molly’s fingers remained tight. “I suppose it’s worth a try. Perhaps.”

“I think that’s all we can really expect of ourselves right now.”

This time, Caleb’s only reply was another thoughtful hum, and he didn’t open his eyes. Either he’d finally caught the trailing edges of sleep once more, or he was simply out of words. It was a phenomena with Caleb that Molly was well familiar with, by now, and prided himself on respecting.

Besides, what else was there to say? Tomorrow was going to suck. All they could do was get through it and bolster each other the best they could…but after a day like this, there was only so much any of them could be expected to do.

Still, even as Caleb’s breathing started to even out, Molly found that he couldn’t force himself to rejoin his friend in sleep. He felt thin and stretched, every nerve tense as piano wire and screaming with dread that something else was about to go wrong, something else was about to happen, something else was going to _get into his head_ …

The person at his back shifted subtly in their sleep, but it was enough that he felt the brush of a fur cape against the back of his neck, felt a familiar leg nudge casually against his own, managed to zero in on the sound of a familiar voice breathing slow and deep. _Yasha_.

Maybe she wasn’t asleep, either. Maybe he’d woken her. There was so much he wanted to say to her. There was so much he wanted to ask. _Did you see me? Did you hear me? Did it make you want the same, or am I the only monster here?_

Someone else grumbled dozily from Yasha’s other side. He recognized Beau’s voice easily enough. He realized that Yasha had probably made a deliberate effort to lay down close to her.

He reminded himself sternly that this didn’t have to be a bad thing. The echoes of the succubus’ voice in his mind would probably take a while to fade. That didn’t mean he had to listen.

Maybe Yasha wasn’t asleep, but even if she wasn’t, they were both too raw and wounded to talk now. Molly knew that. So he simply looped his tail around her ankle, as he had done so many times before, to remind her in sleep and in waking that he was here for her and no monsters would change or poison that. He refused to give up his need for her out of fear, even as he thanked the Moonweaver over and over again that the rest of his family was still beside him after today.

With that resolution firmly in mind, Mollymauk Tealeaf closed his eyes and tried to force himself back to sleep. 


End file.
